


pro patria mori

by hardboiledmeggs



Series: a borrowing of bones [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adulthood, Established Relationship, F/M, Light Angst, Political References, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 13:27:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10413219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardboiledmeggs/pseuds/hardboiledmeggs
Summary: Steve and Sharon reunite and hash out some of the tough relationship stuff.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So here's the end of this. Hope you all like it. I'm on tumblr as hardboiledmeggs in case anyone wants to cry together about Sharon Carter.

_**My friend, you would not tell with such high zest** _   
_**To children ardent for some desperate glory,** _   
_**The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est** _   
_**Pro patria mori.** _

_**-Wilfred Owen, 1917-1918** _

 

 

* * *

 

After Sharon leaves Steve in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, she spends a long month in Berlin. She does her best to regain a normal routine: she drinks espresso from her favorite café and feeds her cat and goes for long runs through the city with loud music blaring in her ears. She does her best. She wonders, though, when Steve will make good on his promise to get her out, to get her back to him. She wonders if he _can_.

 

Then, like a bolt from the blue, she sees Everett Ross pass by the doorway to her office followed by T’Challa and a royal escort. It happens so fast, she’s sure she’s imagined it, but then they double back.

 

“Have dinner with me tonight,” T’Challa says as he steps into her tiny office with a flustered Ross in tow. It doesn’t sound like a question, and all Sharon can manage is a nod before they leave again.

 

_Steve is in Wakanda_ , she thinks, and it’s all she _can_ think until that evening, when T’Challa arrives at her threshold.

 

Sharon opens her door to him, and the formidable woman accompanying him. The two of them sit side-by-side on her sofa; she feels nervous and overheated. After they refuse her cursory offers of glasses of water or cans of diet cola, she sits, too.

 

“What’s the plan?” she asks, looking from T’Challa to the woman sitting across from her: an intimidating, elegant figure – straight backed and impeccably dressed, with a shaved head and prominent gold earrings. T’Challa introduces her as Okoye, one of the kingdom’s legendary Dora Milaje bodyguards.

 

“We’ll go to dinner,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Just as I said.”

 

“Right.”

 

Suddenly Sharon isn’t exactly sure if this is the extraction mission she was banking on. She feels her face flush.

 

“And after,” T’Challa continues, “I thought we might come back here, just to pick up some of your things. Whatever would make you comfortable. And then we’ll return to the embassy.”

 

Sharon’s brow furrows.

 

“There will be press,” he explains, “And photographers. And people will think and write the most untoward things, certainly. But I’m sure you will agree that those falsehoods will be a welcome distraction from the truth.”

 

The idea is suddenly familiar, easy. A routine bait-and-switch. Sharon nods.

 

“I’m sorry to start rumors about you,” she tells him, and means it.

 

T’Challa shrugs. There’s a warmth to him that is intoxicating and infectious. “I owe our friend a great debt.”

 

He stands and buttons his suit jacket.

 

“As for tonight, you need only be yourself, spending an evening with an eminently charming head of state,” he tells her with a winning smile. “I’m very eligible, you know.”

 

Okoye lets loose a long-suffering sigh and rolls her eyes.

 

*

 

The evening plays out perfectly. Over steak and wine, T’Challa tells Sharon about Wakanda, and she tries to remind herself that the place he’s describing - with its lush jungles, oppressive heat, bright colors and lively, sophisticated people - is as good as home to her now.

 

Afterward, with her belly full and her head swimming, she’s driven to the Wakandan embassy, along with a full suitcase and a plastic carrier holding her yowling orange tabby cat.

 

On the embassy rooftop, as she ascends into a plane with Okoye and T’Challa behind her, she hears shouting from the tarmac behind them.

 

“Where are you taking her?” Tony sprints across the rooftop toward them. The sudden sight of him is disorienting; at the roof’s edge Sharon sees the hollow shell of his suit, shining red and gold in the city’s dim glow. “Are you taking her to _him_ ?” Tony lifts a hand to point at T’Challa, to hold him back. In the bright glare from the plane’s landing gear, light glints off the hardware wrapped around his fingers. Something in Sharon’s chest clenches; even from this distance, she can feel a sense of betrayal coming off Tony in waves. “ _Agent Carter_ ,” he shouts, this time at her, and as T’Challa doubles back, Okoye presses her palm against Sharon’s back, pushing her up the runway and onto the aircraft.

 

In the plane’s belly, Sharon takes a seat, straps in, and watches the silent scene play out through a tiny oval window. Tony gesticulates and argues; T’Challa stands firm with his arms tightly crossed.

 

Sharon thinks about the photographers outside the restaurant and outside her apartment. She thinks about the speed of flash drives and the internet. She wonders if she’s been used not just as a ruse, but as a beacon. She wonders if Steve knows about this part of the plan.

 

Then T’Challa turns away, turns his back, and strides towards the plane with Tony yelling after him. As he walks up the gangplank and disappears from her view, Sharon hears the plane’s engine roar to life.

 

In a moment, they’re in the air, and T’Challa is walking into the passenger bay where Sharon and Okoye are seated. Sharon looks at him, confused and not a little accusatory. T’Challa pauses, hesitates for a moment.

 

“I told him that, while Berlin is beautiful, I would rather end the night in my own bed. Surely a man like that can understand.” He smirks and winks at her.

 

But then he takes the seat next to Okoye, and his false flirtation is done. Sharon watches as he looks over at her; his regal façade slips, and for a moment Sharon sees his exhaustion and relief. Okoye takes one of his hands between hers; T’Challa leans his head onto her shoulder and closes his eyes, and for the rest of the flight, Sharon might as well be a million miles away.

 

* * *

 

 

In Wakanda, they’ve formed an odd sort of ex-pat community. Steve’s first order of business, after Bucky had gone under, had been retrieving Laura Barton and the three Barton children. Then he’d broken into the Raft and brought Scott, Sam, Clint and Wanda back. A month ago, they’d extracted Maria Hill. Just a week earlier, Natasha had joined them.

 

He’d hesitated with Natasha – he does and doesn’t have reasons to trust her now – but she had told him her truth: told him that she had known Bucky, too (though she hadn’t called him by that name). She told him that they’d fought together, loved each other, and been violently torn apart. When Steve told her what Bucky had done, how gone he is, she had said that she wanted to be with him when he wakes, even if he didn’t remember her. The sentiment was so horribly familiar, it made Steve’s chest ache.

 

T’Challa’s grace and acceptance still overwhelms him. In the past months, he’s done more than give them refuge - he’s given them a home, or as close to a home as Steve’s had since he came back from the ice. He tries not to think about what T’Challa - and the Wakandan people - might expect from them in return.

 

Now, he waits on a landing pad, watching as T’Challa’s black jet hovers and sinks to the ground. He watches as T’Challa and Okoye disembark, and are swiftly carried away by a royal entourage. Then, he sees Sharon descend, and in an instant he’s run across the tarmac and wrapped his arms around her.

 

“I missed you,” he murmurs, with his face pressed against the joint between her neck and shoulder. Her arms tighten around his shoulders, pulling him closer, and Steve feels like his love-filled heart might burst. This woman has fought for him, killed for him, risked everything for him, and now she’s soft and warm in his arms, radiating strength and the kind of stability Steve can’t quite admit to himself he craves.

 

Once they’re alone, once the tarmac has cleared, she pulls back, holding him by the shoulders and looking up at him.

 

“Tony was there. When we left the embassy.” She looks serious and worried.

 

Steve nods.

 

“Did you know he would be?”

 

He chews at his lower lip. “T’Challa wants to end the stalemate. The others agree.” He sighs. They’d seen Sharon as little more than a trigger, even though it had been obvious how much Steve had wanted and loved her. He hesitates before he tells her the last part, the part that had been most painful to hear. “They just want to go home again.”

 

“Jesus,” she breathes, and thinks for a long moment. “If-- What does that mean for you?”

 

Steve shrugs a shoulder and swallows past the lump in his throat.

 

“Not much. I’m not going anywhere as long as…”

 

Sharon nods slowly. “Yeah. Okay,” she says, and reaches to take his hand. “Me too.”

 

 

“I’m sorry,” he manages to say without letting his voice crack. He studies her face, looking for a sign that she hates him for bringing her here, but she just leans up on her toes and presses her mouth to his.

 

He leads her to his quarters - a cozy studio flat with a picture window that overlooks a massive, rushing waterfall. A haze of mist rises and fogs over the glass. Beyond, he can see only lush green for miles and miles. When he’d first been given the apartment, it seemed like a view from a childhood dream, a scene from the pages of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Jules Verne. Sharon smiles when she sees it - that window onto a wild, untameable force of nature - and nods, impressed.

 

Steve kisses Sharon again, undresses her, undresses himself, lays her out across his bed. He kneels between her knees, bringing his mouth to the cleft between her legs and pushing the point of his tongue against her clit.

 

He stays for a long time, feeling lazy and content, happy to keep his mouth between her legs until the world falls down around them. As Sharon writhes and groans and climaxes under him, he ruts his hips against the sheets. He comes twice and doesn’t care, too dedicated to his work to care about the sticky, cooling ejaculate spread across his hips and belly.

 

He watches her come once more - her cheeks flushed, her blonde hair tangled and fanned out on the pillow, her mouth open and gasping, her hands gripping the bedsheets and pulling, violent and barely-restrained. He watches as she catches her breath.

 

“As long as I live,” he says, awed, “I’ll never get tired of that,” and it feels like a vow. Sharon gives him a dry laugh and reaches to pull him up and over her. Her legs hitch around his waist; she leans up to kiss him, slow and thorough. Steve winds his fingers into her long hair and pulls, just enough to make her moan into his mouth.

 

“ _Please_ ,” she says, quiet and demanding. Her hands clutch at his hips; as he pushes his cock against her, her fingernails score his skin, and he nearly comes undone again.

 

He’s too excited to last long, too wound up and eager to be inside her. His heart pounds; outside the window, the falling water roars; underneath him, Sharon sighs and pushes her hips up to meet his. He makes it through a few torturous thrusts before he quakes apart. The sound he makes as he comes a final time is loud and guttural and instinctive.

 

Steve rolls away and sprawls out on the mattress, pulling Sharon tight against him.

 

“Whatever happens, don’t be sorry,” she says after, with her head lying on his chest and her legs tangled up with his. “It was my choice to be here.”

 

And god, but that sounds familiar.

 

*

 

When they finally manage to drag themselves from Steve’s bed, they end up in a Wakandan café, seated by an expansive second-story window, each with a cup of dark, rich coffee.

 

They tell each other in broad strokes about the histories of their hearts. Sharon tells him about the handful of boyfriends she’s had – two serious – who had either played too fast and loose with her feelings or had never been able to reconcile themselves to her hectic schedule, which left little time for lazy Sunday mornings or evenings on the couch.

 

Steve tells her about the chorus girls, and about Peggy. “I never—“ he starts reluctantly, “I never told her what she was to me. Even when I got back; I thought it’d hurt too much.” Sharon watches as his eyes go watery and a flush rises on his cheeks. He feels utterly exposed.

 

“Did she ever talk about me?”

 

Sharon glances at him warily and bites the inside of her cheek as though she expects him to dislike her answer. “She never really talked about the war. I think…I think that was normal, for vets.” Steve tries not to let his face fall. “But after you came back, she wouldn’t _stop_ talking about you,” she goes on; her face brightens, “She told me every time you came to visit, and what you were like, and how much she’d missed you.”

 

“You were already across the hall.”

 

He sees her deflate a little. She hates this part of what has happened between them.

 

“Fury asked me to take that assignment.”

 

“You didn’t want it?”

 

“I wanted it. I knew – and he knew – there was no one else who could’ve—”

 

Steve nods slowly. “You got Fury out that night. Out of my apartment. To those doctors who weren’t…who got him out of SHIELD.”

 

She smiles and shrugs, too modestly.

 

“Who were you working with?”

 

“Who else?” she asks back, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Hill.”

 

She nods.

 

Steve looks out the window to his right. The tree canopy bucks and sways under every gust of wind; the jungle is beautiful and incomprehensibly vast.

 

“I was so lonely then,” he says at last, still looking at the trees. “In that apartment. I wish I’d known you were there.”

 

Sharon scoffs. “You would have hated me. I’m surprised you don’t, still.”

 

Steve shakes his head. “When I needed help, you were there. Fury was right.”

 

“Are you still sad?” she asks quietly, and Steve looks at her. “Like you were then?”

 

It hits him – how much she had seen him, how much she had noticed before he even knew who she was. He remembers how she had helped him in DC and Germany, and found him in Thailand, and followed him in Washington. How she had trusted and loved him and believed in him from the beginning.

 

He purses his lips and gives her a tight smile. “No. Not like then.” He thinks of how much he loves her and how much it means to have her with him. And he thinks of Bucky – how much he loves him and how far away he is now. “Things always change. Some stuff gets better, some stuff gets worse.”

 

Sharon nods. Steve feels something seep through his veins - an unfamiliar sense of danger. They’ve never really hashed this out. Even in Thailand, talking had taken a back seat to fucking, to the need to feel and be felt, to kiss and be kissed. He suddenly feels like he’s walking into the unknown. He takes another step.

 

“What are your parents like?”

 

Sharon smiles. “Boring. On purpose.”

 

Steve raises an eyebrow and tilts his chin.

 

“Boring doesn’t come naturally to Carters,” she explains, and he laughs.

 

She tells him that her grandfather had been SOE during the war, then, much later, Peggy had convinced him to join SHIELD.

 

“I think,” she starts, and then hesitates. “I think it was hard for them. For my dad. My grandfather was…not a stable man. You know how it is, this life. Not a lot of time for family dinners and softball games. I think it was rough for Peggy’s kids, too.”

 

Steve winces, hating the thought that Peggy’s family – and Sharon’s – was anything other than perfectly happy. Across from him, Sharon’s folded in on herself.

 

“Were you there when Peggy…When she…”

 

“Her body was failing her. There was a choice to make, and she made it.” Sharon sighs and leans back in her chair. “Her kids flew in, and so did I. We were there.”

 

“Why didn’t anyone tell me? I would have—“

 

She gives him a reproachful look. “She hadn’t seen her son in over a decade. And she’d gone nearly that long without seeing her daughter, too.”

 

“She chose them.”

 

“Of course she did.”

 

“That’s right,” he says softly, almost to himself, “That was the right thing.”

 

A thought strikes him then, and in an instant it tears and blazes a hole straight through his heart.

 

“Did they grow up hating me, like Tony?” Steve thinks of the way Tony looked at him in Berlin, the way he looked at him in Siberia. He thinks about all the anger and betrayal and grief that sat between them even before they first met. “Did you?”

 

Sharon flinches. Her mouth opens and closes. She looks out the window with her brow pinched.

 

“I didn’t hate you,” she says after a while, and that’s all the answer Steve needs.

 

He’d spent so much time thinking about Captain America’s legacy, that he hadn’t realize that Steve Rogers had left behind a legacy, too, and one that was infinitely more complicated and burdensome than he ever could have imagined.

 

“They – your parents – were boring _for_ _you_.”

 

“Yeah,” she sighs and gives him a lopsided smile. “And look at me now. What an asshole.”

 

Steve traces his fingers along the lines of his coffee cup. Something he can’t name gnaws at him, feels like it’s eating him up from the inside.

 

“It doesn’t have to be like that though, does it? Having kids? Clint’s kids—“

 

“Are living in exile,” she finishes. “Clint’s great, but those kids don’t know where he’s going, or when he’s coming back, or _if_ he’s coming back,” she shrugs and looks away from him. In the angle of her mouth and the crease in her brow, Steve sees the things she’s only hinted at – her father’s sadness and loneliness, how resentment and anger had fermented in the Carter family. “It’s messed up,” she says finally, looking at her hands, picking at her nails.

 

“You don’t want kids? I mean, you don’t think—”

 

Sharon looks up at him. Her eyes widen and her cheeks turn pink. For a low moment, Steve feels impossibly stupid.

 

“It’s not a question of what I want, not with something like that,” she says, quiet and serious. “It’s about…it’s about doing the right thing.”

 

“Yeah,” Steve says absently.

 

Truly, he’s never given much thought to children; he’s never slowed down long enough for it. But now the idea sits in the front of his mind – heavy and immovable. He tries to think of how old he is now – or, rather, how old he would be if it weren’t for the ice. Twenty-nine? Thirty? His mother had been barely twenty years old when he was born.

 

“Do you want kids?” she asks quietly, then takes a long sip of her coffee.

 

“I don’t know,” he says, and it’s true.

 

“Hm.” She nods, and Steve thinks he sees traces of relief behind her eyes.

 

“Anyway,” he clears his throat and leans back in his seat. “I’d like to meet your boring parents someday.”

 

She grins. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

 

He shrugs a shoulder, feeling insufferably happy now that she’s smiling again. “Maybe I’m too exciting.”

 

“ _Way_ too exciting.”

 

*

 

They spend long hours in Steve’s bed. They talk and kiss and drink strong coffee. They drink red wine and make love. They read the news to each other and sleep together. They set up food and water dishes and a litter box for Sharon’s cat. Steve deigns to give the animal a few cursory pats and decides to pretend that a cat is an acceptable pet. They tell each other, in no uncertain terms, about the shape of their love - how deep, how much, how long. They don’t discuss the future.

  


*

  


“Sometimes I feel like I died in the ice,” Steve tells her one night after they’ve turned out the lights, when they’re illuminated in blue moonglow and nothing else. He’s always braver in the dark.

 

It’s something he’s only ever told one other person: Sam, who had been quick to console and reassure him. But Sharon just looks at him in the dim light, quiet and serious as always.

 

“Are you a ghost, then?” she asks. From someone else, it might have sounded like ridicule, but something in her voice tells him that it’s something she’s thought about, too.

 

“I don’t know,” he says, and he feels open and honest in a way hasn’t since he came back. “I shouldn’t be here.” Steve takes a deep breath. He didn’t get this far with Sam. “And nothing...nothing kills me.”

 

Her brow furrows. Steve reaches to pull his shirt up over his belly. “I should have a scar here. A bullet hole. And here,” he reaches down to press his palm against the back of his thigh.

 

“The serum--” she starts.

 

“When I was a kid, I got beat up so bad I had this gash on my face, here,” he points to the arc of his cheekbone. The skin there is clear and unblemished. His body - still so foreign and incomprehensible - doesn’t document his present, and has utterly erased his past. “How do I know anything’s happened to me? How do I know I’m the same person?”

 

Sharon’s quiet for a long time; long enough for Steve’s face to start burning with embarrassment and regret. Tears prick the backs of his eyes. His throat burns. He feels a familiar, sudden wave of panic that makes his breath hitch and his stomach churn. He’s a monster - an aberration - and now he’s all but confessed it.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers desperately, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve-- I’m--”

 

“Stop,” she tells him, and he does. She looks at him squarely in the dark; her fists are clenched, gripping the bedsheets. “If nothing kills you then it’s because you aren’t meant to die.” She takes a breath. “You’ll know things have happened to you because I’ll tell you. And so will Sam and Natasha. And Bucky, when... ” She hesitates, then reaches over. Her hand presses, light and cool, against his stomach, where that gnarled, fleshy scar ought to be. “And if you’re a ghost, then I’m not afraid of you.”

  
  


*

  


“Where did this come from?” he asks on another night, when they’re in bed and tipsy and relaxed, tracing the pad of his index finger along the jagged scar on her forearm. Underneath the sheets, his legs brush hers.

 

Sharon purses her lips. He can feel her muscles go tense. “Rumlow. When the Insight carriers…” she shrugs and doesn’t bother finishing, trying to seem casual, but Steve’s heart sinks. She tugs the sheet up over her bare breasts, pinning the fabric down under her arms. Steve can feel her hiding from him.

 

“You were there? In the building?”

 

The thought of the Insight carrier crashing into the Triskelion is one that keeps him up at night for a multitude of reasons. Learning about that day’s casualties had been horrifying and humbling.

 

“It took me three days to wash all the debris out of my hair,” she tries to smile at him, then pulls her arm away. Steve’s chest aches. “I was lucky.”

 

“You lost people.”

 

“A lot of people lost people,” she tells him cryptically; a hot jolt of frustration shoots through him. He can tell she’s trying to protect him.

 

“Don’t bullshit me. It’s my fault.”

 

He thinks of how he’d resented her when he found out he’d been under her surveillance. How justified he had felt. Now, he wonders why she doesn’t hate him, instead.

 

“It’s HYDRA’s fault,” she says solemnly, “No bullshit.”

 

Steve wants to tell her that _HYDRA_ is his fault, that _everything_ is his fault, somehow, but instead she kisses him, pushes aside the bedsheets and straddles his waist.

 

“I love you,” he says as she sinks her hips down onto his, and she just says “I know.” He kisses her, pours his heart into her, and tries to be enough.

 

*

 

They watch the results of the American election come in together. In the early hours, Steve amiably regales her with stories about his mother, who had been ruthlessly, unapologetically Irish, socialist, and female at a time when all three traits were categorically unacceptable. He pops popcorn and tells her what it was like to vote for Roosevelt. Excitement skips through their veins like electricity.

 

Later, when the returns come in and the night starts to grow quiet, Steve wraps his arms around Sharon when she cries, and that only makes her cry harder. He takes her to bed, tucks her under the covers and curls his body around hers. In the dark, she speaks freely about what it meant to grow up at Peggy’s side – what it had meant to look up to a steely, unsinkable woman who endured controversy and survived loss.

 

After, they lie together, still, and think about the women they carry, who aren’t just names written on a family tree, but irrevocable parts of their DNA. They are the women who taught them, and endowed them with strength and resilience. Steve falls asleep in Sharon’s arms, and for the first time since he came back from the ice, he dreams.

 

When he wakes up, he knows the truth. He’s going to leave Wakanda, even if it means leaving Bucky. Another fight is about to start, and he won’t - _can’t_ \- sit on the sidelines.

 

*

 

They have two weeks before Tony makes his first contact, sending encrypted messages through Wakanda’s espionage agency. At first, the messages are small. Coy, almost. _How are things_ . _I’ve been better, not that you asked._ Phrases that make Steve roll his eyes and scoff. Then comes a message with a date, a time, and things turn serious.   


~  


Steve wakes up next to Sharon on the morning of November 30, and she wakes up next to him. He kisses her neck, runs his fingers up and down the sides of her waist, slides one thick thigh between hers.

 

“I love you,” she says in a whisper against his skin, and for a moment, Steve feels himself fly apart. He squeezes his arms around her; his chest feels tight with joy. He kisses her, long and hard, with his fingers tangled in her hair and his hips rutting against hers until they’re both breathless and flushed.

 

“I love you,” she says again, with a grin on her face and her eyes dark and bright.

 

“I love you, too,” he says, reaching down to push his boxers down and pull aside the bit of cotton between Sharon’s legs. They make love, slow and sweet, unrushed.

 

After, Steve presses slow kisses to Sharon’s belly; he feels relaxed and peaceful, willfully forgetting what he knows the day will bring. He jumps when a sharp knock hits his door.

 

He pulls on underwear and finds Sam on the other side of his threshold.

 

 

“He’s here,” Sam says. “Suit up.”

 

*

 

They get dressed – Steve in his black tactical gear, and Sharon in a white jumpsuit laced with Wakandan vibranium.

 

“Tell me,” she says to him, looking fierce and radiant and ready for a fight. “Is this a truce negotiation or a last stand?” She clips a weapons belt around her hips. “I just want to know what I’m walking into.”

 

He doesn’t know. He shrugs. “It’ll be fine. We’re just going to talk.”

 

“What if it’s like it was in Germany?” she asks him, “What if it’s worse?”

 

“It won’t be,” he tells her, “I won’t let it be.”

 

She gives him a long, unsure look, but she follows him anyway.

 

*

 

They line up on the asphalt outside the Wakandan capital building: Sharon, Scott, Clint, and Wanda stand to Steve’s left; Sam, Natasha, and T’Challa stand to his right.

 

A black jet erupts out of the clouds, hurtling towards them. A door underneath opens, and from its belly three figures emerge, hover in the air, then beeline towards them. Tony. Rhodes. Vision. The sky above them darkens ominously.

 

Then, unexpectedly, a massive fourth figure drops from the aircraft’s hull, falling like a stone to the ground below. Despite the distance, Steve can hear trees snap and rustle. _Banner_.

 

In his peripheral vision he can see Natasha shift, anxious and braced. He sees Sharon set her hand on the pistol at her hip. Sam’s wings click and whir to life.

 

Steve reaches out, almost unthinkingly, and takes Sharon’s free hand. Their fingers lace together. Above them, thunder rolls and lightning cracks, close enough to illuminate their faces in clear, white light.

 

Sharon squeezes his hand, and Steve smiles.

 

 


End file.
